Game Over: Bang-On Balls: Chronicles

When I first saw trailers for Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, I thought it looked like a laugh. You’re a ball, you visit places and do platforming or something — I just thought it had a good humour about it. Also yes, balls.

Then I played the game and found a game about an actor making their big break in showbiz, struggling against the biggest actor of the tibanmes to make their own mark. Trying different genres, wearing all sorts of hats (quite literally), and proving they had what it takes. Okay, fine, it’s definitely not quite as serious as all of that, but that’s the undercurrent of this 3D platformer which has over 20 achievements, literally all of which involve farting in different places.

The narrative is all inferred, because after taking control of your ball and following the tutorial messages, you follow a yellow-striped ball into a big TV and find yourself fighting Vikings. You have objectives in each level, and once you’ve completed those it summons the boss, which is the aforementioned yellow-striped ball in a different outfit. Why are you battling this ball? Why do they run from you to hide in each level? What caused the sets of each film to only appear if you can collect enough film reels from inside each level? The answers to these questions and more are completely absent from this game. And it doesn’t matter!

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles doesn’t hold your hand, other than tell you the objectives and show you a marker to where each one is. A gate won’t open? Find out how to open it or go around it somehow. Honestly, I like my hand to be held — walk me through your games, developers! But in the case of Bang-On Balls, I found each level easy to navigate and the objectives clear. A lot of the time I found myself accidentally stumbling into what I needed to do while I was just exploring! When I say “level” it’s actually a massive open area filled with enemies, hidden items, Easter Eggs, and more!

That’s one of the best things about this game, you can just go around and try to find hidden crates of gemstones, film reels, and cages of balls. Come to think of it, I don’t know why there were balls in cages, but it seems that there are a set amount of those and film reels in each level. The gemstones, however, are used to buy outfits to change the look of your ball, though I found many more than I ever needed to spend.

Speaking of outfits, you also come across weapons and shields to equip, though I found the cooldown time on most of them was too restrictive to be super useful. Your main attack in Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is to just slam your ball into other balls. I did like using Mjolnir, though, as it stunned enemies, allowing me to score more hits in a short time, unlike the grappling gun which just pulled enemies towards me allowing them to hit me first…

I highly recommend Bang-On Balls: Chronicles for anyone looking for a low-stakes 3D platformer with a great sense of humour. It took me about 10 hours to hit the end credits, though the developer is apparently in the process of making another level, so I can’t wait for that!